


a little culture

by mothicalcreatures (laelreenia), Murf1307



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Bigender Alex, Gen, Lou-Ann is a Trans Woman, Mentions of HIV/AIDS, Mentions of Prostitution, Mentions of Violence, Nonbinary Character, Period-Typical Language, Queer History, Sibling Bonding, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, Trans Scott
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 20:56:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8637748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laelreenia/pseuds/mothicalcreatures, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Murf1307/pseuds/Murf1307
Summary: Alex and Scott bond over being trans and Alex takes Scott to the Village to show him a little culture.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a ficced segment of a roleplay I did with [Murf1307](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Murf1307). Murf was Alex and I was Scott.

Scott hadn’t really had a proper chance to talk about Alex about trans things since he’d found out that Alex was trans like him. Well, not quite like him, Alex had called it being half-transsexual, since she was only a girl some of the time. There had been an almost conversation in the hallway a few weeks ago, but that had been interrupted by other students coming by. Scott really wanted to be able to share everything with Alex. He didn’t know any other trans people that he was aware of and it meant even more with Alex because Alex was his _sister_. 

Now seemed as good a time as any to approach Alex about it, since things had settled down, so Scott headed for Alex’s room. Alex's door was ajar when Scott reached it, but he knocked anyways. "Alex?"

Alex had been lounging on her bed and when knocked she sat up. "Come in!"

"Hey," Scott said, pushing the door open slowly and shutting it behind him once he stepped inside. "I um, I was hoping we could talk about... trans stuff and- and what I brought up when we talked in the hall a few weeks ago."

"Of course," she said, nodding. "C'mere, kid."

Scott moved over and sat down on the bed next to Alex. "Do you remember the day we met. The- the one year anniversary of my... 'accident'?"

The day Alex had shown up at her parents house in Nebraska, four years ago, she’d been told that a year earlier, Scott had been in a car accident that had left him with lasting brain damage. "Yeah. You had a nightmare, and I told you about Darwin."

Scott nodded. "Well... my ‘accident’... it wasn't an accident. I got... I got fag bashed. I got outed at school by a teacher and... a group of older kids cornered me after school one day. I was in the hospital for a month, they got suspended for two weeks. Car crash is the story we tell people who don't know I'm trans."

Alex’s eyes widened. "Jesus Christ, Scottie." She pulled him into a tight hug. "I'm so sorry. You were twelve fuckin' years old, nobody has any right to do that to anybody, much less a twelve year old."

Scott clung to Alex. "I thought I was gonna die. I was so scared. When we moved back to Nebraska I was so terrified I'd get outed again that I refused to make friends. Then you showed up."

"I'm really glad I did." She kissed the top of his head. "I – leaving New York when I did might've saved my life, you know."

Scott sniffled a bit, a few tears had leaked out, but he didn’t move to wipe them away, couldn’t really with the glasses. "Yeah? What- what happened in New York?"

"In the last couple years, a lot of people in the Village have been getting sick and dying." Alex held him a little tighter. "If I'd stayed, it coulda got me too."

Scott held on to Alex tighter as well. "I'm glad you're okay. When I thought I'd lost you that was the worst I'd ever felt. You're probably the best thing that's happened to me."

"Thanks, Scottie." She rested her cheek against Scott's head. "You're one of the best things to happen to me, too."

"I'm glad I can be honest with you," Scott said. "That you know everything and we share this. I've never known anyone else, that I know of anyway. It's so sad to think someone like you might be right next to you and you never know cause it's too dangerous to say anyone because they might not be."

"I'm really glad I can be that for you," Alex murmured. "We should go down to the Village sometime. You deserve to meet some more people like us, so you know your history with this, too." She kissed the top of his head again. "There's a lot of girls, still, in the places I used to hang around."

 

They didn’t make a trip down to the village until it was officially summer vacation. Alex and Scott were driving back down to Nebraska to see their parents and Alex suggested that they stop in the Village on their way down. It felt a little strange to leave the mansion, to be honest, but Alex was looking forward to showing her brother all her old haunts, to see who was still around. "C'mon, Scottie. It's a long drive to Nebraska."

"Well it already has to be better than the drive up," Scott said, climbing into the front passenger seat. Scott had been anxious and miserable on the drive up.

"Yeah, true," she said, grinning.

"You know, when we were talking about the day we met, I remembered that I'd asked you if you thought I'd be a mutant too," Scott said. "Looks like the answer turned out to be yes."

Alex laughed a little. "Yeah, turns out." She punched his shoulder gently.

Scott smiled. He was feeling a lot better than he had in a long time. He didn't feel so isolated anymore. He had Alex now more than ever as someone he could trust, he was surrounded by other mutants to the point that he couldn't really not make friends. He felt safe.

Alex grinned has she drove them down to the city. She fucking loved this, loved being able to share this, of all things, with her kid brother.

"What was it like? Living in the Village?" Scott asked, as they were driving through Salem Center.

Alex shrugged a little. "Well, I mean...it was amazing, in a lot of ways. But I was really fuckin' poor, which made it hard."

Scott nodded. He had known that Alex moving from whatever job she'd had in New York to the farm job she'd had in Nebraska had been a step up, but he'd never really considered how much of a step up. "What did you do? I mean, for a job, when you lived there?"

Alex took a deep breath. She needed to be honest. "I was a hooker, Scott."

"Oh," Scott wasn't sure what he was expecting Alex to say, but it hadn't been that. "That-" He also had no idea how to respond to that.

"Yeah." She shrugged. "I'm okay now, though. I dealt with all of that, and then found you and mom and dad."

"That's good. That's why you were glad to get away from New York then?"

"Yeah."

That made sense. "Do mom and dad know?"

Alex shook her head. "No. They don't know I'm trans, either."

"Well then, it'll be a surprise, if you show up in a dress anyways," Scott said. He didn't know if it would be another girl day for Alex when they arrived, but if it was... "When we're visiting mom and dad would you wear your dresses all the time on girl days? Or- or just like around the house and stuff. I don't- I don't really know how safe the town is." Scott had only ever been stealth there, people assumed he was a regular guy, but he didn't know what Alex would do.

"I can do that," Alex said, smiling. "I kind of want to. Since it's family."

Scott nodded and smiled back before settling back into the seat.

 

The first intended destination Alex had planned was a little gay bookstore that she knew the owner of. She wasn’t one hundred percent sure it would still be there, but she was hoping. It was still there and Alex and Scott parked a little ways away and walked over. 

Scott was a little bit in awe of the book store. He'd never seen so much explicitly queer stuff in one place before. Alex had given him some money and told him to buy something, but Scott didn’t even know where to begin. He ended up asking the woman at the register what she'd recommend. She'd looked at him and said she didn't really have any recommendations for books about gay men. Not in an I don’t care about it way, she just hadn’t read any. Scott replied that he wasn't actually looking for anything specific, and that he'd be happy to read pretty much anything. The woman gleefully led him to the lesbian pulp section and pointed out some books that were her particular favorites.

Alex watched as Scott got led to the lesbian pulp books, grinning. She flipped through some newsletters and magazines, picking up on just how bad this disease spread was getting. Nobody outside the village seemed to care, either, it looked like.

Scott eventually settled on two books. _Spring Fire_  and _The Price of Salt_. He'd only planned on getting one, but the both seemed really good and the woman at the register had said they were two of her favorites, so Scott got them both. When he'd made the purchase, he joined Alex by the magazine stand.

Alex smiled over at Scott. "You found some books?"

"Yeah," Scott said. "Two, um, _Spring Fire_  and _The Price of Salt_. The woman at the register said they were really good."

"I've read those, and they are."

Scott nodded. "Can we get lunch?" he asked. "I'm kinda hungry." He'd been too full of nervous excitement to eat much for breakfast before they left.

"Yeah, of course. There's a pizza place up the street." Alex grinned.

"Awesome," Scott said. 

It felt really nice being able to go out and do things with Alex like this. It wasn't like they hadn't gone out and done things together before, but this was different. This was them getting to do things together, because they were both trans, in an area where they were a little bit safer than a lot of areas.

She led Scott down to the pizza place. "So, Scottie, did I ever tell you about Stonewall?"

Scott shook his head. He knew about Stonewall, what had happened with the riots, but he didn't remember ever hearing Alex talk about it.

"Well, I was there," she said, grinning mischievously. "In the bar, when it started. Marsha threw that shot glass, and everything changed."

Scott's eyes widened, "Shit. That's- Wow."

"Yup." She grinned a little wider. "So damn glad I didn't get drafted 'til that winter."

"Yeah, wow. Stonewall." Scott smiled. "My sister was at Stonewall."

"Damn right she was," she said. "That crowd was all queens, street kids, and transsexuals. You didn't have a bookstore like that in '69."

Scott tightened his grip on the books a bit, shifting the way he held them to hold them against his chest. "I'm glad the bookstore's there now."

"Yeah, me too. It's a sign that things are safer, I guess." But so much of it was sort of a facade, wasn't it?

Scott nodded, understanding the implications behind Alex's "I guess." It was safe enough for a bookstore, but well, kids were still getting beat up in school parking lots and people were still dying of some unknown disease that no one who could do anything seemed to care about.

Soon enough, they were at the pizzeria. "Now, if too much hasn't changed since '79, there might be people I know here."

Scott nodded. The prospect of meeting some of Alex's old friends was kind of exciting honestly. Getting to meet other people like them.

Alex lead Scott into the pizzeria, her smile widening when she saw one of her old bar buddies. "Lou-Ann!" she said. "Glad to see you're still around!"

"Alex? Where the hell have you been?" Lou-Ann said, making her way over to the two of them and embracing Alex as soon as she was close enough. 

Scott hung back a bit, not wanting to get in the way of their reunion.

"Nebraska," Alex deadpanned, hugging her back. "Found my family, which was nice."

"You gotta tell us before running off again," Lou-Ann said. "We were a little worried you'd gotten yourself killed. And good on you finding your family. They happy to see you?"

"Yeah. Things are good." She turned to Scott. "This is my kid brother, Scott. Scott, this is Lou-Ann, she's been runnin' this place for, what, ten years now?"

"Just about. Nice to meet you Scott," Lou-Ann said, offering a hand to Scott.

Scott shook her hand. "It's- it's really nice to meet you too."

"This your first time down in the Village?" Lou-Ann asked.

Scott nodded. "Yeah."

Alex grinned a little. "Figured I'd give the kid some culture while we were on our way home. Scottie's goin' to a prestigious boarding school upstate now."

"And there's not a lot of opportunity for culture up there now is there," Lou-Ann said, grinning.

"Not really," Scott admitted. "I'm the only queer kid there I know of." Though the school did have it’s own mutant culture environment, this was significantly different.

"Well it's good you've got your sister to take you around the Village."

Scott smiled. It really, really was.

"I'll let you two do what you came here to do," Lou-Ann said. "And the food's on the house, so don't you even think about trying to pay Alex."

Alex rolled her eyes. "That's just not good business practice, Lou-Ann," she said, but didn't fight the offer further. It felt...good, to be back in the Village, knowing that she had a home to go back to, that she wasn't an overgrown street rat on the verge of being too old to hook. She had a life.

"Sweetheart, you're a special case," Lou-Ann said. She kissed Alex on the cheek before leaving to let Alex and Scott get food, and also to make sure that the staff knew that Alex's and Scott's food needed to be comped. 

Scott smiled. "She's really nice."

"Yeah, she is. If she wasn't a lesbian, I might've dated her." As it was, they'd slept together once, and that was that.

Scott gave a small nod. "So uh, what should we get?" Alex knew this place so Scott figured it would probably be a good idea to let her decide what they were gonna have.

"They have a really good sausage pizza, if you're down for that." Alex grinned. "And it's real pizza, not the pale imitation you can get in Nebraska."

Scott laughed. "That sounds good. Let's get that."

"All right," Alex said, and ordered the pie. Between the two of them, they could polish it off, she thought.

“Oh, do you need to ask for no sauce or would Lou-Ann know that?” Scott asked.

“Lou-Ann knows I’m allergic to tomatoes,” Alex said. “The white sauce they have for pizza’s here is actually only here because of me.”

"Thanks for bringing me down here," Scott said as they waited on their pizza.

"You're welcome, Scott." Alex's smile softened. "You deserve to get to see this stuff, y'know."

Scott smiled. "It's really incredible. Knowing the Village is here is one thing, but actually being here…” 

“Yeah, it’s a big difference huh.”

“A good one, but- but yeah. Thanks.”

“Anytime, Scott.”


End file.
